EU Kids Act will bar under-15s from opening their own social accounts

The European Commission will publish an EU Kids Act on 17 September that stops children under 15 from opening their own accounts on social networks, video-sharing sites, online games and AI chatbots. Ursula von der Leyen is due to preview the text in her State of the Union address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on 16 September. Henna Virkkunen, the Commission vice-president for tech sovereignty, will walk through the articles with her in Brussels the next day.

A Commission document seen by Reuters and Euronews sets a ladder rather than a single cutoff. Children under three get no access to the listed services. Ages 3 to 12 may use only child-specific products under full parental control. Ages 13 and 14 may hold “introductory” accounts that a parent opens, with limits on who can message them and on screen time. From 15, a teenager may create an account, but the service still has to meet safety-by-design rules. Details can still move before Thursday’s formal drop.

Why Brussels is writing a bloc rule

France, Greece, Austria, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands are all drafting or advancing national age laws. France’s own statute was paused by the Constitutional Council on free-speech grounds. That ruling left a hole. Member states asked the Commission for one text so a child in Lyon and a child in Vilnius do not live under different app stores.

The draft reaches further than Instagram and TikTok. Spain and the Netherlands asked last week to pull in video games and AI companions that give “mental health and personal development advice to minors.” Those products sit in the same risk bucket as video platforms in the leaked communication. Companies would pay a supervisory fee to fund national regulators. Fines would follow the Digital Services Act pattern if a platform fails age checks or ships an unsafe default.

The political claim in the draft is blunt: “Access of children to platforms remains a key issue, and whether kids have an account or not makes a huge difference in terms of risks.” The Commission argues that Union-level action is “the most appropriate way forward” because 27 national bans would fragment the market and leak around borders.

What still has to be negotiated

The bill needs the Council and the Parliament. That process runs many months. Age assurance is the fight inside the fight. A rule that bars under-15s only works if a platform can tell a 14-year-old from a 16-year-old without building a new identity database. Biometric checks, government e-ID and credit-card tests all have opponents. The leaked text talks about safety by design and parental controls. It does not yet lock a single verification method.

Platforms will also argue over scope. A group chat in a game, a homework bot, a YouTube logged-out homepage and a TikTok account are different products. The draft treats them as one family of risk. That is the part most likely to be rewritten in trilogue.

For parents the immediate fact is simpler. If the Act survives in anything like its present shape, a child under 15 in the Union will not be able to tap “create account” on the large social and video apps without an adult in the loop. The speech on Wednesday and the paper on Thursday start that clock. The law itself is still a negotiation.